Hockey Puck, Rattlesnake, Monkey, Monkey, Underpants
by likerealpeopledo
Summary: It's been 9 years since Logan and Rory have been in the same room. What happens now?


It takes more than a few years for Rory to recognize the pattern: the phone calls arrive on the same spring weekend each May, and by the third year, she can practically smell the Macallan through the phone when she answers, before a single word is spoken.

The first year, the disembodied voice of Logan Huntzberger proclaims, "Nullus desideria!" and hangs up, leaving Rory's heartbeat clanging on the outside of her body, every cell threatening to mutiny and perform opposite functions. It's like being visited by a ghost, if ghosts could dial phones. (She and Lorelai had always argued about what corporeal functions could be performed by the undead, and they eventually settle on phone dialing as being beyond the scope of practice. Like ghosts can't possibly haunt via fiber optics, they have to live in your general vicinity or else it is just generally unfair.)

Her roommate on the campaign trail takes one look at her and wordlessly offers her a bottle of beer. All Rory can remember saying is, "Yellow light. Semi truck. Police sirens." Neither of them has any idea what she's talking about, but the beer is cold and there's Pictionary down in the lobby.

A year later, she's at Lane's, barbecuing, trying to keep Steve and Kwan from committing low-grade fratricide when her ringtone cuts into Zach's band's latest demo. The line crackles and sighs. "Rory."

Preparation is key, and she'd wondered if this might happen again, so this time, she's ready. She's steely in resolve and years of debating with Paris has only honed this ability, so she's armed with cogent arguments and a pre-determined list of talking points. She can picture the list in her head, her bullet journal with the asterisks and the color coded squares, and all the ways she knows that she's done the exact right things. No more jarring of her senses this time, mister. _I shall not be jarred._

"I'm coming to town next week. Can I see you? I need to see you." His words slip and slide, skid into one another. Sobriety does not appear to be on his side.

"That isn't a good idea, Logan." Rory hasn't worked out the exact math, but she's fairly certain that up to 87% of their relationship was comprised of not good ideas. If he'd like an itemized list, she'd gladly send one.

Kwan squeals, but she swears she hears a muffled Australian voice cut through the static that she thinks could be Finn, and maybe Logan is standing on some of precipice, wind swirling, ready to jump. He is forever ready to jump.

"C'mon, Rory, don't shut me out." Two years since he walked away, and the only times he's ever made any kind of effort are these phone calls. There have been days that she expected the reunited Life and Death Brigade to burst into one of her assignment meetings, some elaborate stunt, but nothing. Not a letter, not a note, not a flash mob, not a carrier pigeon with an apology. Never accepting less than everything, but she's the one to blame.

"Go to bed. You're drunk." She's sure wherever he is, it's not early evening, and he's not nearly finished, but the phone disconnects anyway.

Year three, she goes on the offensive, not even letting him speak before she launches, risking the fact that it could be someone other than Logan calling her in the middle of the night, the second weekend in May.

She doesn't even remember what she says, but she knows that she compares his feelings about commitment early on to his being in an airlock, and how now he's trying to keep her in one.

"Rory, I'm sorry." And he hangs up.

Year four, she gets haunted twice, once by a cardboard mailer expressed from her grandfather's lawyer, the expungement of her boating offense, and again by a ringing phone. A conversation (does it have to be two sided to be considered a conversation? Is one side a talking to?, her mother asks her later) where Logan just says, "A wise woman once told me that if you can't be happy, you can at least be drunk."

For some reason, in year five, he just breathes heavily into the phone, like he can't catch his breath, and then says, "I just need you to forgive me, Ace. I wish you'd forgive me." Year six, he says, "I'm not mad anymore, Rory. I get it. It took me a while, but I get it now."

Years seven and eight are radio silent. She wants to say that she is relieved, but if she's honest, it's mixed with a surprisingly sharp disappointment.

On the ninth year, her phone rings simultaneous to a knock on her Hell's Kitchen apartment door. "Open the door, Gilmore."

She's in sweats and buried beneath a late dinner of about twelve pounds of Poptarts and Red Vines, her hair pushed on the top of her head in a messy bun. And not the cute, worked at and carefully arranged messy bun-a legitimate rat's nest of hair perched precariously atop her head. The hallmark of the exhausted and the semi-depressed.

She stays on the couch, curling her toes against the coffee table, weighing the pros and cons. "How did you even know where I was?" It wasn't like she'd sent out change of address cards when she moved in here, but Paris and Doyle have always had loose lips.

"I have ways of making people talk." His voice is warm this call, clear. Smirk-tinged. Old Logan. The one that makes her wish she'd showered after Krav Maga tonight. "Let's go, kid. Open the door. One foot in front of the other. A journey of a thousand-"

She pads heavily over to the door, and opens it, and he's there, live and in color. Logan's thinner, his face leaner, no more baby face-it's the face of a man. His eyes sparkle; his hair still expensively and deliberately tousled, but shorter.

"Hey, Ace." Dimples. The diminutive slips out, lands with a thud at her feet. He senses her flinch. "Too soon?" Always deflecting with a joke, that Huntzberger.

She steps back, almost involuntarily, her ability to control most of her muscle groups severely diminished. He takes it as an opportunity to enter, eyes sweeping and surveying her mostly modest surroundings. If it was her, stumbling into his apartment for the first time in nine years, she'd be on the hunt for some kind of evidence that he'd struggled without her, that he was somehow less. It's not a trait she's necessarily proud of, just one that she can admit she possesses. "What are you doing here, Logan?"

He has a tiny silvery half moon scar on his cheek, and her finger almost twitches, wanting to trace it. It's a remnant from his accident, one that if you didn't have his face memorized, a stranger wouldn't notice it. Couldn't.

And anyway, he's not a stranger. He should feel more like a stranger. Bells should be sounding, blaring alarms and alerts of great danger. Instead, she gets a warm feeling and the desire to touch his scars. It's all wrong.

He tucks his cell phone into his pocket, smiles. "In town for a bit, so I'm here to take you out for a drink. I saw a pub around the corner. It looked hipster lite, biker gang free. I could give you a chance to change?"

"Since when did you actively avoid biker bars? What happened to rising to a challenge?" She can remember a particularly long-winded, highly embellished tale of bikers with a taste for human flesh, in a bar in Reno, being saved by a bounty hunter who'd caught up to the gang just in the nick of time.

He shrugs, "Just don't have the eye of the tiger these days." He's dressed for a business meeting, with grey flannel slacks and a blue silk tie very loosely knotted against the collar of his fitted shirt. It's been a late spring, and the air is still steely with winter, but something about him always makes her feel like it's summer.

Rory glances down at her own sweats, YALE embossed down her right leg, ten years old, ragged, and practically polished with wear. These could rightfully belong to Logan for all she knows. "This pub, it seems sweatpants opposed?"

"They could, in fact, be pro-sweats, but they really seemed more yoga pant adjacent." His cinnamon eyes scan her face, hands in pockets, aggressively casual.

They haven't ever been friends. She remembers roundly skipping that step both pre-and post breakup. Doing a bit about comfy pants is exhausting, even nine years later.

She offers him tea, water, coffee, and he finally settles on a bottle of beer that he opens by karate chopping it against the tile of her countertop, and she excuses herself to make herself more presentable and possibly, just slightly medicated.

He's already seen the bird's nest, and her makeup-less face, and ten years ago, he held her hair while she threw up, so who really cares if the darts in this blouse don't really accentuate her breasts.

She shouldn't be thinking about boobs, and neither should he, frankly, so she grabs a turtleneck and has it halfway over her head before she sees the sleeve of a narrowly striped boatneck shirt peeking out of the closet. _Eat your heart out, Audrey Hepburn._

The hair may be a lost cause. _Eat your heart back in, Audrey Hepburn._

"How's Lorelai?" Logan calls from the next room, and how can he still possibly be this casual. Granted, one of his greatest talents was to trivialize and minimize so many of his life occurrences that she shouldn't be surprised.

The brush groans with resistance against her tangles as she shouts back, "She and Luke are doing really well. The Inn is franchising, they're travelling-it's really idyllic."

"Good to hear it. They deserved a little peace."

She's grateful that he doesn't inquire about her grandparents, as the loss of her grandfather is something too raw for her to touch right now. Somewhere in the haze of the past four months, she remembers a delivery signed with the Huntzberger name, and a donation in her grandfather's memory to the Whiffenpoofs. Her grandmother surely sent a thank you note.

She studies her face in the bathroom mirror, a sliver of Logan visible in the corner. He's sitting with his elbows on his thighs, hands clasped loosely between his knees, seemingly concentrating on a portion of the floor. _Logan Huntzberger is in my living room._ "How's your family doing?" She's just proud she's been able to move past the _those people_ days, be the bigger person.

Lip gloss, mascara, no blush, as her cheeks have already flushed ballet slipper pink. Deodorant, spritz of perfume, dab of essential oil on each wrist and behind her ears. She looks human again, a little tired, but good. Happy. Healthy. Can someone just over thirty look accomplished? She looks accomplished.

"We like to use that term loosely. Everyone's healthy, wealthy, and...wealthy." Logan's artificially light tone gets closer, and his body enters the doorframe. She can smell the beer, and the bamboo scent of his cologne. It sends her directly into the past, like they've both been transported to his New Haven apartment as he watches her get ready for one of her Friday Night Dinners.

She fixes a barrette into her hair and mentally laments cutting her own bangs this month because she's been too busy at work to duck out to the salon, but the strands are smoother now, and less of a haven for squirrels. "All right, Huntzberger, let's get you to your natural habitat."

Her hand is on the knob, and suddenly his hand is on her hand, and he's got that look in his eye, the one where he's about to clobber her with some basic emotional outpouring. "I just…I just have to know." He takes what feels like a dramatic pause. "Tell me that Taylor Doose is still alive, kicking, and performing any and all elected and appointed governmental duties in Stars Hollow. Tell me he's building the Stars Hollow Death Star."

She's had zero alcohol, and as much as she's built a tolerance to the single phone call per year, having Logan in direct eyeline is more than enough to keep her from being able to concentrate on basic voluntary functions. And it's clearly keeping her from reading his signs correctly. Although he did sort of love Taylor Doose almost as much as he loved her. Once.

"I don't know how to tell you this, Logan, maybe you'd like to sit down, but Taylor has finally stepped down as Town Selectman. He decided to retire, and moved up to Maine to be closer to his family." His hand is still on hers, warm and dry, and shows no sign of moving. "The door's not that heavy, you know. I can get it on my own."

He glances down, shifts, trails his fingers off of hers, probably slightly slower than completely necessary. She shivers and she's not sure if his disappointment is more reflective of Taylor's moving or her reaction to his touch. "Sorry."

The evening air is cool, and she crosses her arms across her chest to help fend off some of the wind. Logan's hip knocks hers occasionally as they walk the few blocks to the biker-less bar, and three steps in front of the door, he stops her, his fingertips balancing on her forearm. "Before we go any further, I just wanted to say, I'm glad you let me in tonight."

She wants to say, _Me too_ , or _why didn't you come to my door nine years ago_ , but instead, she says, "I hear they have live music on Thursdays."

"Thank God it's Wednesday," Logan says, and they're blasted with the electric warmth of the pub's heating system as he tugs open the door.

They settle into a table, all awkward small talk and that feeling like this should be normal, but it is far from normal, and how is she supposed to just start over and pretend like this is just another date.

And she has been dating. It's not like she scurried off to a convent over the intervening years, although she's fairly certain she's dated at least one guy named after each of the gospel writers. It's just that no Matthew, Mark, Luke or John has done much to make her want to settle down. Lorelai tells her, at least once a year, that she's worried that Rory's confusing being finicky with being independent.

They have one drink, and then a second, and maybe it's Logan's third or fourth when he starts to get a little melancholy.

"Do you know how many women I've slept with since we broke up?" He twists the glass in his hands, making concentric rings of moisture on the tabletop.

"I don't know how I could possibly know that." She doesn't want to possibly know that. Of course he's not a Benedictine monk, but the image is certainly comforting. "Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder?"

"Less than five. You know why? Because you broke me. That whole thing about not spooking me when you jab me with your spurs? Totally legit. I crave monogamy now, Rory. One woman, forever. Before you, I never could have imagined wanting that. It hasn't worked out yet, but I think...I think I know why." She wills her eyes to look away from his, but he's got her locked in a tractor beam.

She changes tacks, because otherwise, she's getting sucked in. "I'm sorry you are no longer the Before picture from the chlamydia ad campaign, Logan. Mea culpa. That does explain why the condom industry was picketing outside my apartment for the majority of 2011, though."

"Do you ever feel like you're just kind of stuck in the past?" The waitress sets down another round, and Logan pauses until she is clear of the immediate area. "I can't even smell saltwater without thinking of you, Rory."

"That must be very difficult, what with you living so close to the bay."

"No, seriously. The day I got that expungement letter, it felt like that part of our lives had been erased. Like they took the thing that cemented us, that connected me to you. No one else stole that boat with you, Ace."

"Super romantic, I don't know why we didn't get matching prison number tattoos." Genetics from Lorelai were strong, the deflection gene on point.

He will not be deterred. This is the drunk Logan she remembers, nostalgic and sentimental. "Rory, it was always just me and you, and the ocean. We were free, and then it was just-gone."

"It still happened, Logan. I have callouses on my palms that have never healed from all my potato peeling and trash picking. I have a jumpsuit from the zoo in the farthest reaches of my closet. I think a monkey touched it once, so I kept it. I can't think of another time I'd own a monkey touched jumpsuit." It all happened. For better, or for worse. It got her here, wherever this is. "I hope the connection we had wasn't that tenuous."

"Me, too." His jaw clenches; his dimple disappears, reappears.

"What are you really doing here? You haven't so much as said boo the last two years, and all of a sudden you just show up-"

He picks at his napkin, making tiny stripes with his thumbnail against the paper. After spending the majority of the evening making enough eye contact to cause severe cramping, he can't seem to catch her gaze. "I'm in town looking for places to live. I'm gonna move back here, to New York."

"Wait, what? What about San Francisco? Your whole Halt and Catch Fire life?"

"It caught fire. But in a good way. A very, very good way." Somehow another martini has appeared at her place and Rory knocks back her last drink to start on the new one. It's hardly advisable on a dinner of licorice and strawberry frosted toaster pastries. But the idea of Logan roaming the streets of New York, just bumping into him at the dry cleaner or on line at the bank, is plenty cause for blurring the lines of good judgement. "I missed the smog, and the smell of hot garbage on a Monday morning. San Francisco just doesn't have that. Seriously, though, I'm retiring. Getting out of the business."

"But, but, you're 34 years old." She sputters, and the gin burns in her nasal passages.

"We made some big sales this year. To Dell, and Snapchat, and Newegg. Then we made some really smart investments, on the ground floor of some new apps that really took off. All told, not to be crass, I made an assload of money. Like, I could buy and sell Mitchum Huntzberger a couple hundred times over. For fun."

"I can't blame you for that. It would be kind of fun, just to see the look on his face. Is he proud of you?" There's an image of Mitchum mid-scream that's burned in her brain, and she's long since stopped feeling like he was right about her not belonging in this world. It's her world now, and Mitchum Huntzberger merely exists outside of it.

Logan shrugs, "He's Mitchum. There are degrees of proud."

"You know, my Mom frames every single article I write. There's a wall in their house of all my published stuff, and she highlights little passages she likes and I think she's nominated me for a Pulitzer twice, despite the fact that it doesn't work that way. I wish your dad could admit that you've made something good here. That you made your own life, and you didn't need him to do it."

"Baby steps, Ace. What you and Lorelai have, that's not attainable for mere mortals."

She clinks her glass against his, cheersing, "Well, congratulations hot shot, you made your millions."

"Billions," Logan corrects, and throws back the rest of his Scotch. He has fine lines around his mouth that he didn't have before, not when he was twenty-four. It's impossible to think of what a decade has done to them, for them. "You good?"

"We don't have to go yet, Logan."

That sounds more like an invitation than she means it to, like she's suggesting her blouse really was chosen for maximum effect, and not because it was clean and mostly unwrinkled.

"Yeah?" He sounds hopeful, the most hopeful he's sounded all evening. Logan threads his fingers through her hair, the once and future rat's nest, pulling her closer, and she's surprised at how willingly she follows, her nose nudging against his.

"Everything's changed." Except not the way he looks at her, that's exactly the same. She can still feel it in the base of her spine, how he focuses on her and it pins her to her chair.

"Not everything," his voice is low, "You look beautiful, by the way. I forget how blue your eyes are. Like that damn ocean." Logan's fingers move down out of her hair, toward her exposed collarbone (damnit, Audrey Hepburn, you knew this would happen), lingering on the jutting bone. "You know how I feel about the Gilmore clavicle. You had to remember." She didn't really, but back then he didn't voice a lot of things, so what was one more.

His mouth is on hers, then, soft and warm and Logan, nine years of distance covered in less than thirty seconds. It tingles, with how good it feels, maybe even just because it feels like anything. The problem with numbness is that sometimes it's not possible to even feel that.

And it feeling good was never really the problem, because with Logan it always felt good. It was just a matter of if it ever felt right.

Rory pulls away, and he smiles that deep, Logan sleepy smile that has a way of creating heat in all the right places, the places she forgets exist when he's not around. She starts to pull him toward her, by pressing her fingers into the back of his neck, the shortest hairs bristling beneath them. But it hits her then, _yellow light, semi truck, police sirens_ , "We need to leave. Now." Her chair makes a harsh sound against the hardwood floor as she pushes back, and Logan can't seem to tell if he should stop her or follow.

"Where are we going?" He fumbles through his wallet and throws a handful of twenties on the table, probably twice what a generous tip would be in addition to their tab. He's clearly choosing follow.

"Not here."

"Got it." He picks up her jacket, helping her into it. "Was it, was it something I said? Two minutes ago we didn't have to leave yet and now-"

She shakes her head.

"Should I not have kissed you? I'm sorry I kissed you. No, I'm not really sorry. I just wanted to kiss you. And you know how I can be when I want something." He flashes her a sheepish smile. (Or is it a wolf in sheep's clothing-smile? That was always the trouble with him, so often she couldn't really tell the difference.)

She shakes her head, can't stop shaking her head, like she's the hula girl bobble head her Mom had on her Jeep's dashboard for all those years. The problem is, Rory isn't sure if she's fleeing the situation or dragging him to her bed or some weird kidnappy combination of both.

Logan tucks his hand into her back jeans pocket, reflexively, a gesture from a bygone era. That one where he was always sort of pulling her around, moving two steps faster than her, tugging on her skirt, moving her forward. Forever trying to move her forward.

She's more drunk that she originally assessed; she probably couldn't have gotten her coat on without his assistance, and the doorframe is wavy. "Logan? Are we in a spaghetti bar?"

"Is that like a spaghetti western? No, Ace, I don't see Clint Eastwood anywhere." He leads her around a table, "All right, whoopsie daisy. Swing left."

Maneuvering onto the street proves easier without obstacles and they fall into step within half a block. "What's the plan here, Ace? Am I dropping you at your door? Propping you up on some pillows and making sure you don't choke on your own vomit? After the whole kissing thing, I'm not making any more decisions without complete oversight and mutual agreement."

"You can come in. No propping."

"Consider yourself unpropped. Only leaning for you. Look forward to some definite toppling over." He's looking right at her, and it is still enormously disconcerting. Logan leans over, and she's convinced he's going to try to kiss her again, maybe this time push her up against the doorframe, or push his hips up against hers. Even though it's 11 o'clock at night, she has to squint. He's like an eclipse tonight. "You got keys?"

Clearly, the alcohol has impaired her ability to read his signals. Or her own, because if she wants him to kiss her again-if her back hits that doorframe- it could mean that nine years of separation could have been for nothing. An actual waste.

Her keys are tangled in her wallet and crumpled dollar bills fall out onto the sidewalk, and since when has she been such a mess in all the time she's known him. Rory dips to pick them up but sways a little and Logan takes her by the elbow, steering her into the vestibule of her building. "Let them go, Ace. I'll get you new ones."

"All right, Greedy McFatStacks. We can't all be super duper Richie Rich Richersons like you are. Those are my dollar dollar bills y'all and I can't just let the wind take them."

"Greedy McFatstacks? Really?" He asks, his eyebrow raised.

"I just calls 'em as I sees 'em." She says dismissively, suddenly a human noodle.

"I really prefer fiscally responsible, label-wise."

"Fine, Greedy McFiscally Responsible. Have it your way."

Logan holds up his hands in surrender. "Okay, go easy on me, Cesar Chavez. But if I go chasing them down, who keeps you from falling over? There's a toppling I'm trying to manage here and I can't help but feel this will only reflect negatively on my performance evaluation."

"Fine, fine. Let them eat cake. I can throw money in the streets now. Is Robespierre nearby?"

He ignores her, steering her toward the elevator and punching the button. "You got coffee in that apartment of yours?"

She gives him a look over her bottom lashes.

"Ridiculous question. Of course you have coffee. When don't you have coffee?"

"When I'm sleeping and even then I'm dreaming about coffee."

"I promise you, with my first billion, I'm getting NASA on the whole intravenous coffee drip for you."

"Why NASA?"

"Space exploration is kind of 20th century stuff. Intravenous coffee drips are far more unchartered territories."

"Why are we talking about coffee for six days, Logan?" He has her through the front door, left arm hooked around her waist, as he uses his own hip as a kind of fulcrum to support her toward the couch. She ends up in a boneless heap on the first cushion, Logan perches on the arm.

He laughs, something short and tight. "Cuz I don't know what I'm still doing here, Rory. Are we kissing again? Are we gonna fight? Which one of us wins this game of I'm Okay, You're Okay relationship chicken?"

A sudden violent sensation of morbid curiosity overtakes her, fueled by alcohol and the notion that she may only ever have this one chance to ask, "Hey, what did you do end up doing, you know, with the ring?"

He'd been so relaxed all night that it actually surprises her, the grim set of his jaw, but he swallows and regains his easy demeanor, "I think I liked six years of coffee better. What does it matter?"

"I don't know. It doesn't, I guess. I was just curious."

His eyes darken, and it seems like she may have actually wounded him.

"It's not like I was just gonna give it to someone else, Rory. What do you take me for?"

"Did you return it? Keep it? Throw it in the trash?"

"That would have been a hell of a surprise to the maid, wouldn't it? No, I didn't throw it out."

"Answer the question then, Logan, what'd you do with it?"

It's taken almost nine years and this entire evening for the thought to occur to her that it wasn't her heart that was broken in all of this. "Visiting hours are Tuesdays and Thursdays between 11 and 7."

"Huh?"

"I still have it, Rory. That was code. I guess that's why I'm the idea guy and you're the writer. My metaphors are for shit." He propels himself off the arm of the sofa, hitching toward the kitchen and attempting to make good on his promise of caffeine.

"Don't be so hard on yourself. Wait. You kept it? Does it have a little Lucite box and a spotlight? Is there a sword hovering over it?" She doesn't mean to joke, but the admission makes him almost vulnerable, and she wants him not to be. Because then she's the reason why.

"She's here all week, ladies and gentleman! Tip your waitress!" He shouts over the sound of the tap as he fills her coffee pot with water. "You out of filters?"

"Second door on the right."

She winces as Logan clangs his way through her cupboards in search of grounds and mugs and it's almost as invasive as a root canal. She closes her eyes, and when she opens them, he's in front of her, mouth in a stern line.

"Let's get you, like, one and a half sheets to the wind." He pushes the cup into her hand and the smell alone is almost enough to sober her. He's always made coffee like it was the last cup left on earth and he has to make the buzz last until the end of days.

Logan settles in on the cushion next to hers, starts to put his hand near her leg, thinks better of it. When he rests it on the sofa back behind her head, there's a brief moment she thinks he might be toying with the loose strands of her hair. She pushes her head back to almost nudge him into action but he doesn't take the hint. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

He doesn't quite meet her eyes, shifts his hips so that he's repositioned to face her more head-on. "I know that, Rory. You would never hurt someone intentionally. That's not how you operate."

"How do I operate?" She asks, in a small voice.

"C'mon Ace, you didn't do anything wrong." He takes a sip of his own coffee, grimaces, faltering a little. "How has this not killed you yet."

"Your coffee is so bad that it circles back into being good. Like pug dogs, or really ugly babies."

"Are you telling me my coffee is so ugly it's cute?"

"Would it make you happy if I was?"

"I wouldn't not make me happy." His eyebrows dance, "But this is seriously terrible. I have some furniture I was thinking of refinishing and this could help strip the wax."

Rory takes another sip, spending longer than strictly necessary staring into the half moon of umber liquid against the bottom of the cup. It's completely disconcerting to think that when she looks up, Logan will still be sitting across from her, studying her every move. "I can't believe that you still have the ring. Between the two of us, I never figured you for the Mrs. Havisham."

"I changed out of my wedding dress right before I picked you up." He slides over a little, sets his mug down on her coffee table. "I try not to think about it like that. It's more like, what if she had said yes. Would I have gotten where I did as fast as I did? Heartbreak can be bottomless but it also does amazing things for your work ethic. Maybe I only have you to thank."

It's more than mildly upsetting that she's spent the past nine years tracing the path in which their relationship unraveled and he's actually reveling in it. "You're welcome."

"Rory, I don't mean it like that...We had to make decisions that would benefit each of us. And unfortunately, maybe that means they didn't overlap. But you know, I still wear the dress, as it were."

"I'm sorry that I couldn't say yes. I wanted to say yes. It just wasn't the right time."

"I get it, Ace. You weren't the person you were meant to be yet. You hadn't grown into your own face."

She faux pouts, "What's wrong with my face?"

"Nothing's wrong with your face. You have a very nice face. It's an expression."

"No one, in the history of time, has ever used that expression. Is it Old English? One of those between two stools kinds of things?"

"No, I'm just saying that you did what you needed to do, for you. And I should have respected that. Sooner than I did."

"Like seven or eight years sooner?"

"Yes. Absolutely yes. And I'm sorry about all the phone calls over these last few years, Rory. I was trying to make you feel guilty, and you have, have had nothing to feel guilty about."

"Logan-"

"That whole year, it was failure after failure after failure, and losing you, I could only blame you for rejecting me. But now, now I know why you said no."

"You do?" Having gone over it and over it for almost a decade, she still isn't even entirely certain.

"I mean, I know why I would have said no, if I were you. Which I am not." He smooths an imaginary wrinkle on his pant leg. "But-you didn't think we were gonna make it. Back then, you knew that we weren't gonna make it."

"I should have had more faith."

"I've never had a hard time determining why people don't have more faith in me, Rory. It's okay. You were right."

"I was?"

"The way things were, we weren't going to work. And you saw that."

"I saw it?" If that's true, she's adding _omniscient_ to Special Skills on her CV. "I think I was just twenty-two, and scared." _And I thought there would have been more chances,_ but she dismisses that thought out of hand.

"Scared of me screwing it up."

"I was scared of everything, Logan. If you had asked me to marry you while holding a blue book final in a class I'd never taken, in a language I didn't speak, I would not have been more scared."

He smiles ruefully, "That settles it then, huh?"

"No, not really." She yawns. "I'm sorry. I haven't been sleeping well since-"

"Since," It registers then, and he gently pushes a piece of hair behind her ear. "You doing okay, Ace? I know how close you two were."

Rory shrugs, "It comes and goes. I forget sometimes that he's not going to be at the dinner table, or I think that when my grandmother answers the phone, he's gonna pick up in the other room and start teasing me about-" The grief surges, settles into the base of her stomach. She can't talk about her grandfather without welling up, and she isn't sure that's ever going to change. "It's day to day, I guess."

"That's what they say. Take it day by day." They sit in silence for a few moments, Logan fiddling with one of her throw pillows. He makes a few false starts, taking a breath, exhaling slowly. Instead, he stands, sliding his palms over his thighs. "Listen, I'm gonna let you get to bed, okay? It's been a long night, I'm sure you have work, and I have an early meeting-"

"Will you stay with me? Just until I fall asleep?" She doesn't know where it comes from but it does, and it stuns Logan into a kind of fugue state.

He hesitates. "Huh?" His eyes narrow, as if he's trying to discern whether or not this is a trick. "Stay with you? Are you sure?"

Rory nods. "Can you just sit with me? Nothing untoward. You don't even have to take off your shoes."

"Who sleeps in their shoes, Gilmore? I don't know how you do things in the Hollow, but in Hartford, we-" He's removing his tie as he speaks, shoving the wad of silk into his pocket. "Is this one of those two lonely people seeking solace in a night of passion things? Cause I am totally up for that if it is." He makes an expansive gesture with his arms, then, like he's about to welcome her into them. She knows he's joking, prays he's joking, but something in his slightly manic tone tells her otherwise.

It's been weeks since she's had a decent night's sleep, and the exhaustion has crept up on her slowly. She knows that's mostly why she's asking him to stay, but what the hell is his excuse for being so eager?

Oh no.

"Logan, you're not still in love with me, are you?" The very idea is enough to make her light headed. Also, it sounds incredibly presumptuous when said out loud.

He bounces up on his toes, rocks back on his heels. He's having trouble catching her eye again. "You got one of those sleep number jobs? Something tempur-pedic? I'm finding that the older I get, the firmer I really need-"

"Logan."

He's unbuttoned his dress shirt, revealing his white undershirt and a sinew of muscles that she was previously unaware he possessed. A few more nervous minutes, and he's going to be standing in her living room in his boxers. Not that she'd mind, considering what's under the t-shirt. "Rory."

"Logan." Clearly, this is a fool's errand. "Let's just get ready for bed, okay?"

She finds him a spare toothbrush under the sink, and they brush side-by-side in her tiny bathroom, elbows bumping. Logan catches her gaze in the mirror more than once, eyes crinkling in acknowledgement, silently teasing her.

Her buzz is fading just enough that she's starting to feel self-conscious again, but at least she's practiced good dental hygiene before she expires from sheer embarrassment. "Do you mind?" She gestures at her clothes, and her need to change out of them, and Logan waits patiently outside her bedroom door while she peels off her jeans and pulls on her sweats.

Rory burrows down into her sheets, blessing her weekly laundry day having been yesterday, and tries to casually adjust as Logan sits on the edge next to her. "Where do you want me?"

She realizes that he's barefoot now, his shirt neatly hung on the knob of her bedroom door, belt arced around it. That this is really going to happen, he's committed to staying. Sitting. Sleeping. "Anywhere is fine."

The mattress sags a bit as Logan settles in, his back against her quilted headboard. He doesn't insert himself into the bedclothes, but instead sits atop her quilt, effectively burritoing her into the covers. Well, technically, it's more of a quesadilla, but no one ever refers to a blanket quesadilla, probably for good reason. She's about to tell him as such when he breaks the silence, "G'night, Rory. Sweet dreams."

He's positioned so that his hip is level with her head, so when she opens her eyes, she's got a faceful of men's slacks, which is only half as romantic as it sounds. Finally, she feels him gently toying with the strands of her hair, softly pulling his fingers through the waves of her hair. "Humph." Sleep is coming faster than it has in months, and the lavender scent of her fabric softener and Logan's deft fingers have an almost hypnotic effect. "S'might."

She dreams that she's having dinner with Noam Chomsky, her grandmother, and college Paris, not modern day Paris, and the doorbell rings and rings. Emily leans over the roast and tells Paris, "Richard lost his keys last week and I haven't had the maid replace them yet." Inexplicably, Noam Chomsky laughs, so big and booming that it jolts her out of her sleep.

Moonlight slants over Logan's peaceful face, and she nudges him with her finger. "Logan? Are you awake?"

"Do you know what awake means?" He opens one eye, realizes where he is, what he's doing. He sits up quickly, clutching at the throw blanket he'd grabbed from her bedside chair after she'd fallen asleep. "Rory. Are you okay? Can I get you aspirin? Water? More sleeping?" He's already been so unexpectedly attentive tonight, it gives her a hollow little pit of guilt in her stomach. And something else. Warmth. Toward Logan, specifically.

"No, I'm fine. I just...You don't have to sleep on top of the blankets like that."

"You woke me up to tell me to sleep under-". He turns on his side, flipping to face her. "Did you have a bad dream?"

She shakes her head, lying. "I guess I just sensed a presence, and here you were."

"Do you want me to leave?" His eyes are still bleary with sleep, and he makes no move to vacate. "I don't really think I'm coherent enough to find my shoes right now, let alone my hotel."

"No. No, go back to sleep, Logan. I'm sorry I woke you."

"Oh no you don't, Ace. I put you out in under thirty seconds, this time it's your turn to be Human Sleepytime tea." He strokes her cheek with his thumb, brushing it lightly over her bottom lip.

His skin is warm under her fingers as she rests her hand along his jaw, and he moves a few inches closer in response. "You stayed."

"You thought I was gonna hack out a kidney and leave you in an ice bath once you scampered off to dreamland? Oh ye of little faith." He's joking, but maybe it masks just the tiniest bit of hurt. Just then, it occurs to her that she never expected a transformation, but maybe a transformation is what she got. "Rory, I always should have stayed. I wish I would have stayed."

"We can't go backward." She wriggles closer to him, bridging the gap between their two bodies, her knees flush against his through the comforter. "If we have any hope of going forward-you know, you never answered my question from earlier." Her lower lip juts out in a pout.

"Well if that isn't the elephant sitting on the hippo standing on the giraffe in the room."

"That's a really big room, Huntzberger."

He holds his breath, as if he's about to make another jump with the Life and Death Brigade. He releases it, emitting a small groan. "It's a real two by two on the ark situation, Gilmore. Mayday." His eyes haven't left her face since she woke him, and it's not doing much to encourage her to go back in search of sleep. "Can't we have a little air of mystery?"

"Okay, have it your way." She pretends to start to turn away, and he reaches out to pull her back.

"If I was still in love with you," he says almost too loudly in the stillness of the room, "and this is a big if, I'd probably want to kiss you again. Hypothetically, of course."

"What would that accomplish, exactly?" Her voice emerges more hoarse than she expects, but that feeling is back; the one that starts at the base of her spine, that hooks her to her spot, to his will.

"Well, hypothetically, I'd probably want to untarnish the kissing incident from earlier, in the pub. And show you that, you know, we still have that thing. That indescribable thing that makes us, us."

"That indescribable thing, huh?" She teases.

"It actually cheapens it, to define it. If I have to spell it out-" He slides his hand under her chin, tilting her face up to his, and she closes her eyes involuntarily. "I might not be able to do it justice."

His kisses are just like he is: a little bit reckless, a little bit daring, charismatic and charming; a lot hot. He's tentative at first, gun shy from earlier in the evening, and when she responds positively, he deepens the kiss more assuredly, cupping her face in his hands. "Logan," she breathes. Saying his name is as easy as breathing now.

He pulls back, all she can make out at this distance are the whites of his eyes, and how they seem to flicker, worried. "Is this okay? Do you want me to stop?"

She shakes her head, vehemently, from within the confines of his hands. "Uh-uh." He's pulled her so that she's almost on top of him, her elbows balanced on his chest. Rory takes control then, a relatively new thing for her, but she can tell he likes it, from the equally new growling sigh that he releases as she bites at his lower lip. Her kisses are insistent; insistent that he be truthful, that he stick around. That what's familiar isn't just in the past, but in their future, too. "Tell me the truth, Logan." She says into his mouth, as her hands snake under his t-shirt, and his hands slide down her back.

He pulls back, out of breath, his lips a little swollen from her nibbling at them. She wishes she had more than the moon to illuminate his features, so she could read his expression. "I came here tonight to tell you that I tried it my way for the last nine years and that my way is stupid."

Her eyebrows crease, "Yeah?"

"And I came here to tell you I was moving here, and ask you if you'd give me another chance. Just a chance. If it was one in a million, I'd have taken those odds. But then-"

"Then, what?"

"Then I realized I don't want a chance." His lips curl into a smile under her fingertips, "No, not just a chance. A chance isn't enough. I want the whole kit and kaboodle. I want you, Rory Gilmore, because I love you. Never stopped. Tried. Couldn't. Pride, meet hand. You talk now." His fingers press into the small of her back, where he'd been rubbing small concentric circles as he talked.

"I'm flattered, Logan, really." She starts, searching for words that don't quite appear. It probably feels like it did at graduation, that same uncertainty, the same set of doubts. "And," Rory finds his mouth, presses her lips against his. "All of the things. Yes."

"Did you just hear the swell of orchestral music too or is that me?"

"Um, no, that might just be your sixth scotch talking."

He wraps both arms around her, folds a leg around hers to fully envelop her. "I feel like I know where I went wrong before, though. It's the gestures that were too big. From here on out, the gestures are miniscule. Minute. You'll need a microscope to see the gestures."

"I'll hold you to it."

"I'll have to take the marching band off retainer," he says off-handedly, making her giggle. He reaches over to kiss her again, mouths clumsy, and ultimately, there's more laughter than kissing. "But the rest, they're ours. Yours, mine. Not for mass consumption."

"I really like the sound of that, Logan. Having things that are ours again."

"No regrets, Ace, no regrets."


End file.
